


Another Way to Fall

by jujubiest



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Scene, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6267160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harrison and Barry finally stop dancing around the feelings they have for one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Way to Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This is an early version of how Barry and Harrison started to become a thing in The Future Comes Faster Than You Think. In this version, it would have taken over half the story for them to figure themselves out and then it would have gone to hell fairly quickly, complete with media shitstorm.
> 
> Yeah. I decided that was zero fun to write, so. It didn't happen. But I enjoyed writing this scene, so here it is.

On a Saturday in early December, Harrison Wells gave up entirely.

He’d met Barry for lunch, which he never should have done on a weekend. Having lunch with a group of your employees during the weekday was one thing. Meeting one of them alone for lunch on a weekend was quite another. It was crossing a line and he knew it, but…well, Barry had become more to him than just a pretty face in his periphery around the lab, studiously ignored. He’d made himself a friend, functionally unignorable.

Harrison found himself talking to Barry with an ease he hadn’t shared with another human being in years. He wasn’t a naturally sociable person, but with Barry he didn't have to be. They talked when they had things to say, and didn’t when they didn’t, and it was comfortable either way. Barry was a babbler, occasionally, and Harrison would find himself watching in bemused fascination, the way he could drive headlong through seventeen subjects in a handful of sentences, making no sense whatsoever and then all the sense in the world in the next breath.

So when Barry asked if they could grab lunch on Saturday and continue one of their conversations on theoretical methods of time travel, Harrison found himself without a reason to say no. He could have looked for one, fabricated one…but he didn’t do either. Instead he showed up, bundled in a scarf and coat, ready for a sandwich and a good conversation. He got both, but afterward was what he hadn’t bargained for.

Barry suggested they take a walk, and Harrison conceded, following him out to one of the small parks that dotted Central City—an initiative S.T.A.R. Labs had helped fund. Barry walked a little ahead of him, then turned and walked backward, facing him…somehow keeping his balance and not tripping over anything, talking as he went.

“There’s something I keep wanting to ask you,” he began. “But the lab always seems like the wrong place to do it.” An alarm bell went off in Harrison’s head, but he ignored it.

“You can ask me anything, Barry,” he said, winning him one of those bright, easy smiles.

“Great. So what I wanted to ask was…okay, I don’t really know _how_ to ask it, but…” His footsteps slowed, and Harrison slowed his pace in kind. He looked around and stepped to the side, behind a copse of tall bushes, guiding Barry with him by the arm. From this vantage point, they were concealed from the foot traffic coming along the path. He fixed Barry with a look that was equal parts wary and concerned.

“Barry,” he asked, “is something wrong?”

“Wrong? No!” Barry sounded alarmed. “That’s not…no, there’s nothing _wrong._ It’s just…” He stopped. Bit his lip. Thought for a second, and then tried again.

“Sometimes you look at me, and I think there’s something there. Something…more, between us. Like you’re more than just my boss, and I’m more than just your delivery guy.”

“Barry,” Harrison interrupted, fully aware that he was about to out himself and ruin everything but unable to make himself stop. “You have never been just a delivery guy. You’re far too brilliant for that job, and you know it. The only reason I offered it to you in the first place was that you had obvious experience, and no one would ask questions…it was a way to give you access to the lab, more than anything.”

“But that’s part of what I don’t understand,” Barry said. “Why? Why give me access to the lab at all? I don’t have a degree in any science. I haven’t even been to college.”

Harrison waved that away impatiently.

“I don’t care about degrees,” he said. “A degree is just a formality, society’s permission slip to get paid for doing what you’re already good at. I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me you’re brilliant, and you don’t need one to belong at S.T.A.R. Labs with me…us. The team.”

Something in Barry’s face at that last part let Harrison know he’d screwed up. But it was too late to backtrack now.

“So is that it?” He asked, a slight challenge to his voice. “Is that all I’m sensing, here? Because…sometimes you look at me and I swear, it’s like…”

He trailed off, face reddening and eyes sliding away from Harrison’s, embarrassed. Without really thinking, Harrison reached up and gently tipped his chin back, prompting Barry to look at him.

“It’s like what?” he asked softly, afraid of the answer, afraid of the way Barry’s warmth bled into his fingertips from just that slightest of touches. Afraid of the way those green eyes were searching his.

Finally, he spoke.

“It’s like…maybe you feel the same way I do.”


End file.
